Phallus at Buddhist Marakannon temple, Japan

Posted by Hoshisato (Ealing, United Kingdom) on 21 February 2009 in Miscellaneous and Portfolio.

Fertility temple in Tawarayama Onsen, Japan. There is no way around it, it is a temple dedicated to phalli and they are everywhere in the forest surrounding the temple: some big, some in metal, some grotesque, some stylized in wood as the one in the photo.
Not unsurprisingly, the town of Tawarayama Onsen makes for interesting souvenir shopping.

Thanks for all your comments, please keep them coming. You will do me a great favour by visiting my black and white gallery or blog. For my trip reports, please visit my Travel Blog page.

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Comments (5)

Stovepipe from Ames, Iowa, United States

A strange world we live in. Once when walking to class in college (northern michigan univ) I passed a six foot snow sculpture something like this. I didn't think of it as either artistic or religious, just something that some drunken students must have done. Hard to imagine a town full of these!

21 Feb 2009 10:19am

@Stovepipe: They are indeed impossible to avoid in Tawarayama Onsen. You can buy a ceramic one at the temple, write your wish on it, just like on an ema (the wooden plates you see in many travel photos from Japan) and leave it at the temple. Most wishes were of childless couples but the occasional wish was for a bigger member. ^_^;; I hope it all worked out for everybody.

Nathan from Paris, France

haha, good one

21 Feb 2009 7:27pm

M@ndy from Singapore, Singapore

well that made me blink!

21 Feb 2009 11:50pm

Mobius Faith from Akron, Ohio,, United States

I didn't know such places still existed. I also checked out your other blog site. Great B&W images. Really enjoyable.

22 Feb 2009 3:57pm

@Mobius Faith: Oh they do still exist but usually keep a low profile as they don't want to be turned into a tourist attraction, is my guess.

timothy sullivan from Tokyo, Japan

Hmm..definitely not a 竹の子, hey? ;-) yeah--I find these sorts of places downright intriguing. As in, would any other country have something similar, on such a widespread scale? Ah, Japan.

Good question about the "low profile"; I have been wondering along similar lines. Personally, though, I attribute their seeming lack of popularity to a simple notion: the Japanese haven't recognized that non-Japanese go nuts (pardon the pun) over these sorts of festivals. (Or, perhaps they see what happens to Kawasaki and decide to let sleepy communities remain that way!)

The government actually came out and admitted a few months ago that it had no idea how foreign tourists were experiencing Japan--it had assumed that tourists domestic and foreign alike enjoyed the same things. That sort of assumption blew my mind.

Beautiful photo, btw!

26 Apr 2009 7:27am

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